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Company: Australian Broadband Provider

A broadband provider established in 2009 to design, build and operate Australia's new broadband network. A significant shift in their rollout strategy occurred in early 2014 with the change from a Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) to a Multi-Technology Mix (MTM).

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Client Challenge

The client's Enterprise Ethernet product is used by Retail Service Providers to order and activate enabling transition to billing and assurance activities once activation is completed. As the product name suggests, this product is targeted at Enterprise level end-Customers such as Banks, major Retailers and so on.

The primary challenge here is how to effectively manage complex orders, given that Enterprise Customers can have up to hundreds of locations that need to be solutioned, ordered, activated, assured and billed. This can occur over an extended period and whilst the rollout is in progress, it can be driven by the level of availability.

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Solution

The solution adopted was to use Salesforce.com* CRM to complete ordering and activation, with integration to assurance and billing systems in place to ensure a smooth transition to those activities once activation is successfully completed.

The Salesforce the Partner Community Portal (PCP) with a high-level process flow as follows:

  • Ordering information entered by the RSP. For large orders covering multiple geographic locations a given order would be made up of an Order and multiple ‘Location Orders.’ For large Enterprises a single order can be made up of several hundred ‘Location Orders.’

  • Activation: as the order input is completed for a given Location Order, activation is carried out by the client's using the PCP to update and communicate activation status, which the RSP uses in turn to provide status to its end-Customer.

  • Changes during activation: during activation changes to Location Orders, including modifications and cancellation can be made. Activation issues are managed as incidents managed via Primary Assurance Tool (Remedy).

  • Billing and Assurance: as each Location Order is activated and accepted by the RSP, information is automatically passed onto the client's Billing System and Assurance continues to be managed via Remedy. As a result, billing can occur as each Location is activated, rather than as the total order is completed.

At a detailed level solution implementation required maximising out of the box functionality of Salesforce (Configuration) and customising (Bespoke development) were needed to deliver a business process that was:

  • Able to cope with large complex Enterprise end-Customers,

  • Workable, simple and maximised automation,

  • Easy to use for RSP’s and provided straightforward status regarding activation including any issues that are being encountered,

  • Minimised ordering and activation lead-times, and

  • Integrated with other core nbn systems such those supporting billing and assurance.

Business Benefits

Ability to order, activate and subsequently bill and assure ethernet connectivity for complex end Customers, typically spread across multiple geographic locations and meeting complex Customer requirements.

Additionally, this is being achieved with minimal input effort from the RSP, providing strong visibility of order status along with a smooth and largely automated transition to billing and assurance as each site location is activated.

 

*NOTES:

1. Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com's customer relationship management (CRM) service is broken down into several broad categories:

  • Commerce Cloud,

  • Sales Cloud,

  • Service Cloud,

  • Data Cloud,

  • Marketing Cloud,

  • Community Cloud,

  • Analytics Cloud, App Cloud,

  • and IoT

2. Remedy Incident Management System
Remedy is a complete service management platform that combines ITIL® best-practices and self-service functionality to enable service delivery.

At its core, incident management refers to the tasks and activities that a company identifies, analyses and ultimately corrects, if they are determined to be hazardous. In most well-structured companies, incidents are commonly handled by an incident management team (IMT), Incident Command System (ICS) or an Incident Response Team (IRT).

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